The Most Important Document You Probably Aren't Keeping | Hacker News Reader

The Most Important Document You Probably Aren't Keeping

life-longlearner.com

21 pointsscottbrit11 comments

The most important document your site probably isn't keeping - a custom error page.

Snark aside, here's a cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:E1oDq8P...

Although I like the concept and it could be a good thing to do, I don't think this is as important as this young chap is making out.

When I was younger I used to blog (almost) every question people asked me with an answer. I would publish, sometimes not.

This didn't result in me working out on a beach. I expect this document renders a similar result and it's actually not all that important.

This is ridiculous, the most important document? Really? Let's keep a big document of all the inane questions everyone asks me day in and day out because that is an efficacious use of my cognitive resources! This is exactly the type of article I would expect from someone selling information products.

It's called memory, journals, and mnemonics. If someone asks you something important, commit it to memory, journal it, done. There is no need to keep a doc of every single question and there is a great body of evidence that the most important document you can keep is a daily journal and an idea document.

Too much internet marketer speak. Too much proselytizing.

The granularity with which you can recognize trends and speak to exactly what your customers are looking for in copy is far enhanced by keeping a document like this than memory or mnemonics.

This is an interesting point. I tend to document Q/As that take me more than a couple of seconds to answer. If I logged every time I looked up a question in my notes file, would I get a sense of cycles or trends?

I guess I mis-read the post because it sounded like the most important document of my life, not for product management. I will agree that it's important when you're a business and you want to keep tabs on your customers and their use of the product but I still doubt the point that it's the most important document (except for product management or customer development or customer research).

Worth a try, but I'm looking for recommendations for something other than Google docs. Preferably a service not in the US and always online. Any ideas?

Ever thought of using good old pen and paper? It's the ultimate in "always online" technology that never runs out of battery. (well, I guess your pen can run out of ink, but that's a rather rare occurrence) As a bonus, the NSA can't spy on it without physical access!

Vim...

I'm thinking either Evernote or a simple github repo of plain text documents

I have a system of note-taking, journaling, idea recording, and organization of thoughts using Emacs + Org-Mode + Org-Capture + OwnCloud.

MMV, some people really like Trello for this sort of thing and others just use a Moleskin journal.

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